*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Friday, March 1st, 2013 6:28am PST - promote requested by ctrlaltbleach.

I have a question. Are corporations included as people in this info graphic?

Regardless of the answer, who honestly believes it is their responsibility to achieve economic equality (or "fairness") on a national scale? It's crazy stupid to attempt it on a statewide scale, and equally impossible to try for it on a local, or city wide scale. It's all a man can do to see that he is good to his own family and neighbors day in and day out. He would do well to put his mind to that task, rather than the task of using force to cause all strangers everywhere to be good.

Which is to say, external governance is indicative of a failure of an individual to govern himself internally. Don't vote: Self-govern. It is the only cure.

And what is the point?

Obviously some one is not happy with people have most of the cash. If the top 1% have 40% of all income then what should be done to achieve a fairer distribution?

No, corporations are not included as individual people on this graph.

The problem with this kind of wealth inequality is that it historically leads to social and economic instability. The US's economic dominance in the 20th century was built in no small part on the solid middle class, whose purchasing power drove the economy.

That is increasingly vanishing. The richest are getting much, much, much richer, while the median income, adjusted for inflation, has been dropping for the past twenty years.

It should be pointed out that the richest in America and those who benefited hugely from the bailout can't even be found on census data. You have to do A LOT of study to actually find out they exist, it's something like 1% of the top 1%. They have serious influence, and benefit from a crooked system.

Also for the broader point of inequality. The point of the battle against it is because those on the lesser side have been being hammered for following the rules. You work and work for years with the idea that you'll get ahead, and that's taken away from you. This is how the Tea Party came about, their grievances are legitimate before they were sort of taken away from them by more powerful interests.

The point is, democracy suffers hugely when you have inequality. Ancient Greece (Aristotle) had the idea to fix this is by making the society more equal, therefore you wouldn't have the poor using their power of numbers to subvert democracy against the rich. America had a similar problem in the early days, instead of working towards equality, they worked towards stifling democracy. By putting most of the power in the hands of the wealthy Senate, it made sure that democracy wouldn't get out of hand and the rich white guys can keep what they stole.

Look this isn't something that's right or left. The right and the left are together on this, we don't like tyrannical powers trying to control us. A corporation with it's top down infrastructure is the basic definition of tyrannical. Add that to the fact that corporations dictate how our democracy is run, you have a system that isn't functioning and needs to be fixed.

Our Democracy isn't functional, it needs to be taken down and replaced.

It's a fair question, I haven't explored all the ways to fix it. It used to be that the government only recognized that you could earn a maximum of say $2 million in a year. There's other ideas I'm sure but the point really is that as long as Gross inequality exists, the democracy will be strangled by those with wealth and power. It's not right to crush the rich, but no one is saying that. We're saying that the rich are not above the rest of humanity, they should join us in our society, instead of ruling it when they are not elected or representative of the populations interests.

the game is riigged. it's a big club, and YOU ain't in it!

Even if you honestly do believe a CEO deserves 380x the pay of the average worker, they're certainly not working 380x harder. it would be physically impossible.

The reality is that the CEOs do less, yet they earn more. They were typically either born into their wealth or they lucked into it or they simply know other wealthy people.

Social mobility in the US, (in other words, the notion that if you "work hard" that you'll succeed and climb the ladder") is abysmal. I forget the number but we're ranked pretty low amongst other civilized/industrialized nations.

You can't blame this on Obama, you can't blame this on Bush, It's bigger than government. we allow the 1 percenters to have an unfair amount of influence over our gov't so as @Trancecoach mentioned, the game is rigged against you.

In all reality though. Income inequality would not be so much of a problem if everyone's necessities were met. All things being equal, I could give a shit that the 1 percent had so much wealth, but the problem is for most people, the instant you have a major illness, you're instantly bankrupt.

I've got no problem with capitalism when it comes to things that are not necessities to living a healthy life. Want the latest Apple trinket? sorry, you need to work harder and get a better job for that. But I shouldn't have to become a CEO just so that I don't have to worry if I or my loved ones has an accident and is hospitalized. It shouldn't matter if I'm an engineer or a janitor when it comes to healthcare. In case you've forgotten, we're supposedly all equal and deserving of the same life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I say we eat them alive on live TV and then all go hangout in their mansions. But, I call the big room on the top with the waterfall that flows into the tropical pool. It will nt be a problem see, because we can sell the lambo, the jag, the Bentley all that crap to the not one percenters, then start building homes on the property that is a big as most counties... and not at our expense MUHAHAHAHA

They should add the government to this chart, I wonder how much it takes from everybody and pretends to give back to society, but just hands most of it to the 1%.

Get government out of the economy, and that chart will improve.

Libertarian nonsense. There has never existed a "free market" that did not have rules and regulations enforced by a government. Cite a historical example of a functioning, laissez-faire economy at the state or nation level, I dare you.

Since government in the form of a democratic republic is representative of and composed of the people that are governed, removing the government from the economy means removing the people from the economy. A transition to an ideal "free market" simply means that those that currently "have" will face absolutely zero pressure to consider the "have nots". There will be no environmental regulations, no ability to prevent monopolies, nothing to stop outright exploitation of the labor force.

Our government hasn't created the 1%, it has failed to stop them from accumulating the wealth and power that they have. The answer is not to abolish the only mechanisms that could possibly rein them in but to strengthen and enforce those mechanisms.

If you divided up the wealth and land, in a few years it would look exactly the same as it does now.

BTW, obamanomics has been a smash hit: taxes for everyone--not just the evil rich--have soared, unemployment is permanently high and the economy is at a near-standstill.

@aaronfr Socialist nonsense. What crooked notion of free market do you have where government doesn't enforce property rights, contracts, and punishes fraud? Not understanding that is like implying free speech doesn't require protection from libel and slander.

I'm sick and tired of free markets being misrepresented by socialists, and dared to provide historical examples of something they claim never existed, but have no qualms blaming for every conceivable problem in the world economy.

"removing the government from the economy means removing the people from the economy"... If government = entire society to you, congratulations, you're a socialist. I'm not. Government, to me, is just the part of society that collects taxes as an excuse to provides services, most of which are dispensable and done poorly.

Your projections of what would happen in a free market is the typical delusion of your misconceptions. I can't argue with them, because I can't possibly fathom the disturbed scenarios playing out in your head.

When payroll tax went up on Jan 1st, I had to subtract about $200 from my monthly retirement investments. At my average rate of return over 30 years (when I plan to retire) that's a HUGE chunk of change. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars out of my future pockets.

I thought Obama wasn't going to raise taxes on the middle class???? He's trying to raise taxes even more now!!!! How am I supposed to accumulate wealth when he keeps taking money off the top of my paycheck?

I am also not for blatant redistribution of wealth; however, I strong disagree with:

1) Corporate tax loopholes: Apple 9.8%, Google 11.9%, Yahoo 11.6%, Amazon 3.5% paid for Fiscal Year 2011 instead of advertised 35.5%
2) Off-shore tax havens
3) Privatizing profits and socializing bail outs
4) Subsidies to corporations and industries already drawing massive profits
5) And last but not least, the simple fact that not a single person went to jail after the 2008 crash due to cooked books in the financial sector

It is the responsibility of every citizen to give back to their community to promote a Quid Pro Quo society. Hopefully, many of these problems will be solved in our lifetime.

As Cornel West so eloquently stated earlier last year, and I paraphrase, the true test of every democracy is what to do with its weakest demographic. The fact that people are born in these social strata (i.e. success not always earned) is reason enough to put the pressure on the most fortunate, a group in which I happen to belong, to support those who never even get a chance.

Since most of what I say lands on Neo-Conservative deaf ears, I'll play their game and ask "What would Jesus do?"

Finally, QM, we always argue respectfully, and I want you to know that I do not favor any party. Both Democrats and Republicans put party ahead of nation and that's a disgrace.

I hope 3D printing will passively redistribute wealth the same way the internet redistributed information. We don't see it now, but in a few years to a decade the world will be very different - hopefully for the best!

@renatojj
A government enforcing property rights and contracts and punishing fraud is a government intervening in the economy. Perhaps your pithy original comment wasn't meant to imply you actually wanted the government all the way out of the economy, but there was nothing there to stop me from reading it that way.

I don't think government is the whole society, but I also don't ascribe to your view of what government does. "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Must have been Marx who said that.

The two main pillars of socialism are social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy. I'm sure you don't agree with the first one, but if you want to remove government from the economy, wouldn't that require 'cooperative management of the economy'? So, can I assume you are at least a half-socialist?

@aaronfr and what if I said, "the State and the Church should be separate", would that imply I want priests getting away with murder?

My problem is not my original comment, it's you interpreting "get government out of the economy" in the worst possible light to make a quip about libertarianism and get cheap upvotes.

Government is in bed with the economy, with the monetary system, crooked financial institutions, bailing out banks that are too big to fail... is it OK for me, Mr. @aaronfr, to want the State to separate itself from all that shit, much like society agreed centuries ago that the State + Church = trouble? Or is that too much libertarian nonsense?

It makes me sad that you think socialism has anything to do with cooperation, because there's no room for cooperation when there's no private ownership or capital. Socialism's relationship with the economy is that of central planning, logically, and historically.

I don't expect this to be fixed by politicians because they only benefit from such a system. Unfortunately one of the side-effects of having people with so much wealth and power that they are untouchable. They are above the law, above the court system and will never pay for the laws they have broken to gain their wealth and we have a political system in this country and around the world that will only help them do it. One would have thought that our politicians would have woken up after the 'Great Recession' but that clearly isn't the case. I only fear that the next great collapse will do even more harm as these people go unchecked in their greed and willingness to fuck over the middle class to make a buck.

no one is for blatant wealth redistribution, it's a huge strawman conjured up by the right. No has ever advocated that the government should come in and forcibly take everyone's money and redistribute it evenly. It's another scare tactic boogeyman the right likes to conjure.

the problem is, as you've already said, a taxation system that HEAVILY favors the already rich.

There will always be rich people and there will always be poor people. for as long as we have currency, this will always be the case. the question of fairness and how rich people are treated differently than the poor. The rich are allowed to get away with things the poor would never get away with. In certain cases, rich people get many perks for free that a poor person would have to pay for which is the opposite of what should happen. A rich person, by definition, can afford more without being burdened.

If you believe in the founding principles in America, you believe that every person is equal. Rich people are not "better" than poor people" rich and poor alike are endowed with rights that cannot be taken away. Yet the reality is quite different.

The problem is two fold:

1. When you have not just rich people, but uber rich people, It's far easier for them to exert influence over the gov't to get them to make rules that favor them so they can get even more rich. Elections need to have all private money removed from them...period. voting with your money is not equal. 1 person, 1 vote, end of story.

2. As I said before all things being equal, it wouldn't matter so much that there is a huge disparity in wealth if even the poorest of us didn't have to worry about basic necessities such as health care. One major illness and everything you've worked for is gone in an instant. This simply is not fair. Only the rich and uber rich are not seriously hampered by major illnesses

You realize that IS part of the problem? The 1% have done a lot to push government aside and as a result, they are now where they are.

Um, out of touch with reality much?

"We threw a giant boulder off the cliff, but at the last minute we hired a new President. And since he couldn't stop it, it's all his fault!" Who cares if that boulder was thrown 30-40 years ago . . .

Maybe it's just me, but a lot of people REALLY do not know the faintest concepts that they're claiming to be against or for.

Socialism IS NOT the same as Democracy. Where the hell did you ever get this idea? "If government = entire society to you, congratulations, you're a socialist. I'm not."

Socialism is the idea that the means of PRODUCTION is owned by the people, as opposed to Communism, where the means of production is owned by the State. The ideas developed by Marx, and can be seen widely today in protests, activism, and the Occupy Movement, is that once the Rich have become too rich, the Poor will revolt. You're seeing exactly what Marx feared would happen starting to happen today.

Government is not the entity that simply collects taxes and offers services. No wonder you have such a misconstrued idea of what things are. Government is a natural process in which communities help reduce the threats of of Nature and other states. Without them, well, history will show you very nicely what happens to those without strong governments. But then again, the fact that you don't know, is probably why you have such a skewed belief on what socialism, democracy, communism, free-market etc are.

If you have an issue with the efficacy of government, maybe you should follow the money, not the reason why government exists. Better yet, maybe you should take a look at why the founders wanted most of government to be slow and lumbering. Which again, this would be what Marx was warning against as well. The elimination of the Worker and the Producer cohabiting in the same environment.

You complain that most programs can be "disposable" (although, unless you really meant the wrong word) is actually a long drawn out response from the defunding and forced failure of programs so that those with deep pockets can clamor for "privatization". And yet, almost every case of a public service being privatized ends in either total failure, or a lucrative money making machine with no benefit to the people. For instance, the prisons that jail high school kids, extends their sentences for years, all over a minor truancy case. Why? It's easier to keep a A student in jail and have them behave than psychotic murderers. And since you get paid the same, why would you go through the expense of keeping a difficult and violent person when you can keep the cheaper to maintain one? It's all about the bottom line . . .

Anyway, I'm already at a wall of text here. Simply put, the majority of the people bitching on here are obviously oblivious to reality and are complete dumbasses spewing the same nonsensical rhetoric with their 5th grade education. So long as the majority fails to read at a 10th grade level and continue to worship violence and abhor the educated, they will continue to be sucked dry by the rich.

@shatterdrose the 1% pushed government "aside"... what does that even mean? Are you fantasizing that the economy has been largely unregulated all this time, and that's why the 1% get their way?

Wouldn't it make more sense for you to make the connection that our government is FREAKISHLY HUGE and indebted, and that the terrible injustices in our economy result from massive government intervention in almost every aspect of it, bogging it down, wasting precious resources, destroying the value of our money, promoting wealth inequality... and not the other way around?

People don't hate the 1% just because they're rich, but because they're getting rich unfairly, with the help of government. *Government* is a big part of that equation.

You are so mistaken about the concepts you're trying to explain to me, it's hilarious!

Communism is not about means of production being owned by the state, the utopian concept itself is about a stateless society that is somehow reached through Socialism (Communism doesn't exist outside of theory, so don't worry your pretty little head about it). In Socialism, the State owns the means of production, it owns almost everything, mostly because the State doesn't recognize private property. You can say it "belongs to the people" all you want, but without private property, it belongs to whoever has a say into what should happen with it, i.e., the State. Democracy hasn't the faintest connection with any of this, because voting doesn't make you part of government.

Hate to break this to you but @shatterdrose seems to have read his Marx while you seem to have watched too much FOX.

A 'Government' WILL ALWAYS EXIST in EVERY HUMAN SOCIETY and WILL CONSIST OF THE POWERFUL (in modern parlance read: WEALTHY). This is true of towns in deep Africa, or nations, or in the future- planets of billions.

The idea that government is, of itself, fundamentally corrupt, or has any other predefining characteristic is a point of PHILOSOPHY and NOT THE ONE YOU ARE PUSHING.

The government is REPRESENTATIVES OF THE GOVERNED NEGOTIATING WITH THE POWERFUL.

The elimination of private property is an extreme reaction predicted by Marx and others AS A RESPONSE TO THE EVER INCREASING SHARE GOING TO THE OFFSPRING OF THE WEALTHY.

In theory, chinless entitled inheritees push the situation so much the people turn to violence to reset the system. As a comic side note, this has happened regularly and bloodily in EVERY HUMAN SOCIETY WE HAVE A RECORD OF including the relatively comfortable European countries shortly before they gave birth to the US. (In fact the Puritans on the Mayflower executed the English King for corruption and briefly ruled but upon taking power banned parties, christmas presents, janet jacksons nipples etc and were rapidly kicked out with the monarchy reinstated..)

The modern social philosophers were contemplating how to avoid repeating history over and over. And by modern I mean the 195 year old man whose ideas you are publicly struggling with.

The size of government is IRRELEVANT. Its success or failure in negotiating on your behalf with THE POWERFUL WHO OWN YOU is all you should be concerned with.

Either you are a smart young Rockerfeller-Rothschild type playing clever PR, or the sort of loudmouth whose narcissism and stupidity has sold his family into neo-feudal servitude. Either way you should really shut up.

If the government followed the Constitution then there would not be tax breaks. Taxes are to be the same for all.


The only group willing to do that is the Tea Party. But the left had smeared them as raciest wanting to go back to slavery. How sad the media has fooled so many.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

This video makes me angry - and the comments make me sad. Watching this and then having a thought process that leads to "if only the government was smaller, this would be fixed" just boggles my mind.

I fear for my motherland.

*controversy

Adding video to channels (Controversy) - requested by MrFisk.

Plenty of others have taken up the case on your substantive points, so I won't go over them. But 'cheap upvotes'? Really? Had no idea that stating something that I believe and a lot of people agree with counted as pandering. I might have to rethink the entire 'raison d'etre' of Videosift now.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/George-Carlin-Please-Wake-Up-America

"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying ­ lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."

"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

"You know what they want? Obedient workers ­ people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

George Carlin - Please Wake Up America has been added as a related post - related requested by Grimm.

@cosmovitelli he can't have understood Marx if he can't tell the difference between Communism and Socialism, and he shouldn't bother either since Marx rarely makes any goddamned sense. He's better off learning socialism from anybody else.

You make statements loudly, but you don't make a point. Yes, we need governments, but like you said, they're not agents of the people, they're corrupt and selfish power hungry institutions. I agree with you. If that's the case, doesn't it logically follow that having LESS government is the way to reduce the amount of damage the "powerful" can do to us?

@aaronfr I won't argue whether you were pandering, just that the points you made were awfully cheap, had nothing to do with libertarianism, but with the obvious and laziest misinterpretation one can make of it. Starting your reply with "Libertarian nonsense" is the easiest way to get upvotes from the videosift scum of mindless socialists that can't be bothered to read a full post worth of innacurate statements.

@dag it makes me even sadder that you seem to believe government has your best interests at heart. The government is the agent of that very wealth inequality that makes you so angry. I see limiting government as the way to limit that blatant social injustice, the very institution that tricks suckers into thinking it is "redistributing wealth", when in fact it's been acting as an inverse Robin Hood all this time, taking from everybody, and wasting or giving to the disgustingly rich 1%. Don't dehumanize me, don't dismiss me as some shill for the wealthy, as a brainwashed second-handed thinker. Can't you seriously consider the possibility that government is not part of the solution, but part of the problem? Is that too unbelievable for you?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

America doesn't exist in a vacuum, there are examples of other countries doing things differently that can serve as a model. Here in Australia we tax the fuck out of big earners like mining companies. The wealth is used for social services and education. This engenders a wide, well-educated middle class.

The government may not have my best interests at heart, but in a democracy, it serves its people. Something that Libertarian-Americans are increasingly forgetting.

@renatojj may i ask a question?
why is it every time someone disagrees with your position or offers a counter-proposal you take it personally?

re-read many of the posts here concerning your comment.
they are actually agreeing with you in many ways but they diverge when it comes to how they may go about rectifying the situation.

this is basic "politics 101".all politics is..to break it down to its most base definition is "what should we do".
thats all...thats it.

your solution is to limit government and ( i assume) give more powers back on a state and local level.
others have proposed a different approach.
i say let it all build to a head and implode under its own hubris while i sit on my lawn chair and watch it all burn.

who is right?
which is the best path that will benefit all?
well of course you think you are right,otherwise you would not think and perceive things the way you do.

but you appear to be allergic to any contrary ideologies to your ways of perceiving and that my friend is absolutist thinking and it is dangerous.

@aaronfr pointed out (quite correctly) your basic misunderstanding of socialism and i would add that you are using the title of "libertarian" in the bastardized and twisted media-induced definition that has propagated like a disease in america.

i tell people i am a conservative libertarian socialist just to watch their heads explode,and the funny thing is....you most certainly CAN be a conservative-libertarian-socialist.
but if you are weaned on american corporate opnion/commentray news that terminology would make absolutely no sense.which @cosmovitelli alluded to.

you can have a socialist democracy.
you can even have a communist democracy.
because one is a system of government and the other is financial.
here in america we have been bludgeoned into believing that capitalism and democracy go together like peas and carrots.

marx is a GREAT read,as is adam smith,and BOTH have been bastardized here in america because BOTH warned of the perils of communism and capitalism.

here in america we have a supposedly laissez faire approach but in reality america is a corporate socialist state.
where corporations take the risk to gain huuuuuge profits and dump the loss on the general public.
and that my friend is basic socialism.
to big to fail and too big to jail.

and here we come to my main point:
i dont think anyone here is disagreeing with you.
it appears they all see the broken system which favors the wealthy and powerful and are angered that money=free speech.
they just have a different approach on how to fix it,this does not make them stupid nor naive,just different.

i actually agree with you that trying to fix the broken system by using the very system that is broken seems counter-intuitive.
you suggest limiting government.
i suggest letting it burn.
others suggest enforcing the rule of law.
while others may deem it fit to vote a whole new legislature into office.

all different approaches to the same problem.

engage with those that disagree with you because it forces you to re-evaluate and defend your position often and sometimes you may find while in those discussions a new piece of information,a new way of looking at a problem that exposes the weakness in your argument.
the intelligent person will immediately dump the former to adhere to the newer and more succinct paradigm.
the fundamentalist will not and will continue to bang the gong for a defunct ideology.

so dont take it personally when someone disagrees with you.
nobody is here to dehumanize you nor dismiss you.
they may make assumptions based on your commentary but you can clear that up quite easily.

on a side note :@dag is one of the smartest and open minded people i know from the internet.dont judge him too quickly.

@dag makes a point that has hindered the USA for a while now: we aren't the only ones, and we aren't always right.

Sometimes, the right thing is to let someone else be right. If we're obviously failing, the correct answer is not to make a nonsensical snap judgement response such as "we need smaller government" without even stepping back and asking any "why's". As I stated, many "failed" programs in the US have failed by design as part of long term strategies. However, when other countries do what our antagonists claim is evil, they somehow succeed. Why is that?

We rank pretty low on public education, so our solution is to get rid of it? Yet, in other countries with public education they can manage to out perform our students? Or places with universal health care and deliver more babies alive than we can?

The obvious answer to any socially complex problem is not "we need smaller government." Perhaps, and I know this may be way out there for Fox News Fans, but maybe we should use actual history, empirical evidence, statistics and the whole slew of scientific process to understand and address problems with a Living Code verses the failed stringent policies such as No Child Left Behind etc.



As far as the government not having your best interest at heart, well, frankly, there's a simple solution for that. GET INVOLVED! Stop trolling the internet and start trolling a politician. Go to meetings, Make your voice heard. Hold demonstrations. Do research. Present that research. Talk in a reasonable manner with people you disagree with and show them your evidence, not your baseless rhetoric. Or I know this may be way out there for some, BUT GET ELECTED. You hate your local politician? Take his job. That's supposed to be the beauty of our system. And don't for a minute think it cannot be done. In both 2012 and 2008 (and off year elections especially) there were numerous upset's. There are grassroot candidates who with 1/10th the financial resources won an election. There are people every day fighting, but if you're only sword stabs a post on VS, then you're not doing enough.

That's interesting. In his Democracy in America Vol 2, Chapter XX "HOW AN ARISTOCRACY MAY BE CREATED BY MANUFACTURES", Baron de Tocqueville warned of these dangers (in 1840!):

In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is more
extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more
narrow-minded, and more dependent. The art advances, the arti-
san recedes. On the other hand, in proportion as it becomes more
manifest that the productions of manufactures are by so much the
cheaper and better as the manufacture is larger and the amount
of capital employed more considerable, wealthy and educated
men come forward to embark in manufactures, which were here-
tofore abandoned to poor or ignorant handicraftsmen. The mag-
nitude of the efforts required and the importance of the results to
be obtained attract them. Thus at the very time at which the sci-
ence of manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the
class of masters.

While the workman concentrates his faculties more and more
upon the study of a single detail, the master surveys an extensive
whole, and the mind of the latter is enlarged in proportion as that
of the former is narrowed. In a short time the one will require
nothing but physical strength without intelligence; the other
stands in need of science, and almost of genius, to ensure success.
This man resembles more and more the administrator of a vast
empire; that man, a brute.

The master and the workman have then here no similarity, and
their differences increase every day. They are connected only like
the two rings at the extremities of a long chain. Each of them fills
the station which is made for him, and which he does not leave;
the one is continually, closely, and necessarily dependent upon the
other and seems as much born to obey as that other is to com-
mand. What is this but aristocracy?

Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by
the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to
resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to
surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is grad-
ually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedi-
ence which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions only
exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden of it
upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people
who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to
choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this
rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it
may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties
of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually
falling below the level of humanity.

@enoch I'm not hostile towards those who disagree with me, but towards those who intentionally misrepresent me. I'm guessing you once met some fundamentalist hard-headed fox news republican whatever, and you think I'm that guy. I'm not. So, please stop misrepresenting me, it's really annoying.

You suggest letting government/society burn? Sure, maybe that's what we're headed to anyways. I don't treat politics as discussing "what should we do", that's irrelevant if you and I can't agree on what's actually wrong. To me, it's more about understanding the problem.

@dag The problem I see in how you're using examples outside of America is that what you suggest as a solution in another country can just as much be an example of another country's success despite what you're pointing out as the solution.

"we tax the rich a lot in Australia and everything is better over here". Ok. What if Australia would be better off if you didn't tax the rich so much? Then you'd be just proposing we do what's not helping Australia to help America, all the while overlooking whatever is actually working in Australia.

It does seem somewhat obvious that taxing the rich would forcefully reduce wealth inequality, but then we wouldn't be looking at what's causing the inequality, just trying to punch it out of existence with taxes, and possibly establishing more social injustice in the process. To me, it seems quite unfair to tax someone more just for being richer, a moral hazard even (punishing productivity?), but moral concerns are passé and don't seem to bother anyone these days.

@shatterdrose I treat a smaller government solution as something like a paradigm shift. You see government doing things right in country X, Y or Z, and I see them as, most likely, taking credit for what they're not fucking up. I mean, seriously, don't you know governments do that all the time?

There are plenty of people who unfairly benefit from government, but government is mostly not a net benefit to society, and those people will lie through their goddamned teeth about how much good they do, usually taking credit for anything working in society. There sure are plenty of suckers who believe them.

Wanting less government is not snap judgement, it's not dogma, it's quite often what no one ever considers.

Wanting more government is the convenient way out, governments are the agents of every social planner's wet dreams. In their minds, governments always have "unlimited" resources, they're always above any law, they're never morally wrong, and they're always run by honest uncorruptible people.

I love your "get involved" answer to criticizing government. What you don't seem to realize is that I'm criticizing how much government IS involved. That can hardly be changed from the inside. People who run for government always want a bigger piece of the pie, they're not likely to win on a "we want less pie" platform.

That is truly excellent.

I know you don't like to be considered a Fox goon, but I bet if you show them this they'll offer you a job that pays more than mine.

*quality

Global Wealth Inequality - What you never knew has been added as a related post - related requested by deathcow on that post.

@renatojj
sorry for my belated response my friend for i have just encountered your quotation pertaining to my comment.
how did i intentionally misrepresent you?
reread your commentary.
in every case that someone has disagree with your stance you have ridiculed them as being either delusional or downright stupid.

and this is not considered hostile in your world?

my commentary towards you was written with all humility and humanity.i am sorry if you took it otherwise but that is not my problem...it is yours.

@enoch hi, thanks for replying. You might notice I never said I wasn't hostile, just that my hostility wasn't sparked by mere disagreement, but by being misrepresented, by prejudice.

Try to remember any time in your life when you were the target of prejudice. How did that make you feel? Can you remember how you reacted?

When I was hostile towards people who disagreed with me, it might take some empathy to spot where and how people I argued with were misrepresenting me and my opinions as well.

In your post, I felt that you made many assumptions about me that I know to be false. How would you feel about a complete stranger dispensing advice to you as if they've honestly mistaken you for someone they're familiar with? I'm sure it wouldn't bother you any less if they did so with the best of intentions in their hearts.

I also don't take kindly to the suggestion that I'm incapable of civilized discussion. I'm sure you can appreciate that.

I'm 5 months too late for this conversation, but whatever. @renatojj the problem here is you're misquoting @dag. Let's go with the phrase he actually used, "big earners like mining companies. "

Your comment assumes that he's proposing taxing individuals. @dag did not say that. He referred to the mining companies themselves. By squirreling the argument into an issue of personal taxation (and the incentives/disincentives to work based on tax), that's an unfair twist to the topic.

Mining companies are the topic in this case. The companies are extracting a national resource. They are benefiting from the country's own assets, therefore the country has every moral and economic right to demand its fair share. If the company can still make a profit, and heavens know they do, then you can't in any seriousness find fault with that.

Unlike individuals, who one may argue have a disincentive to work past a certain marginal tax rate, companies will keep operating in a given industry if they're still achieving profits.

The idea that taxes on mining profits (i.e. resource royalties) are *holding back* Australia is just a head-shaker. Where's evidence of that? How exactly would Australia be in a stronger position if it had less royalty revenues, and instead the cash was sprinted out of the country to whatever offshore haven allowed the company to retain profits for its shareholders, who may or may not even be Australian? How would that help?

Hi @Krupo, you raise interesting points, I'm not sure I can address all of them, even though I think a few issues are worth talking about. I'm sorry you felt I was unfair towards @dag, I can assure you that wasn't my intention, because even after reading your post, I'm not sure I see much difference between taxing individuals and mining companies (at least for the point I was trying to make, IIRC).

I wonder what is it about a natural resource that is underground (and that is mostly useless unless extracted), that makes it such a crime to extract and sell it without some additional taxation. It's not like removing oil or minerals is damaging anybody, and it wasn't actually available until someone extracted it. Sure, if there's pollution, or destruction of property, they should pay. However, just paying because it's a "natural resource", when they're the ones making the resource available to society, seems wrong to me, but I guess those who benefit from taking other people's money can always come up with rationalizations to collect a tax.

If we do charge more taxes for mining, though, won't the company just transfer the taxes to the final product, taxing consumers and other industries? More importantly, will raising taxes contribute in any way to better wealth distribution?

Remember, taxation doesn't mean giving money back to society as we often like to think, it just means giving money to government. That's a big difference. Government uses money not just for operation, but as a tool to further its own political agenda, one that sometimes involves corruption, and the added power that comes with it. Why is it best for society to give government more power? Why is society better off by giving government more fuel for waste or corruption?

The reason I mention corruption is because I believe it's an important contributing factor to wealth inequality. I also happen to think corruption plays a significant part in how a government operates, even in the fairest of democracies.